The present invention relates to escape slides used, for example, for the evacuation of persons from ships, aircraft and buildings.
In escape slides hitherto proposed, use is made of a slideway of a flexible impervious sheet, the choice of material for the sheet and the slide angle determining the speed at which a person will descend on the slide. When the slideway is wet from rain at the time of use, it offers a very slippery surface to persons using it, giving rise to an alarming and hazardous increase in descent speed. With long slides, particularly slides used on ships, it is particularly important to arrange for the speed of descent to be controlled so as to ensure that persons using the slide arrive at the end of the slide at a speed not in excess of a predetermined safe speed.
According to the present invention, there is provided an escape slide arranged to provide an inclined descent path for evacuees, the slide comprising support structure and a slideway supported thereby, the slideway comprising a sheet of flexible material provided with holes through which water drains.
The slideway sheet in the escape slide according to the invention may be in the form of a textile fabric and in a preferred embodiment of the invention the fabric is a warp knitted fabric knitted from high tenacity synthetic continuous filament yarn and so arranged in the slide that the warp threads of the fabric extend along the length of the slide.
The warp knitted fabric preferably takes the form of a net produced by warp knitting looping yarns with in-laying yarns to form warp threads and traversing the in-laying yarns to other warp threads to form the weft threads.
The slideway in the embodiment of the invention hereinafter to be described further comprises a woven fabric arranged in such spaced relation beneath the warp knitted fabric as to permit drainage of water through the warp knitted fabric while serving as a support therefor when the warp knitted fabric distends under load during use of the slide. The woven fabric is preferably woven from continuous filament yarn with each of the warp and weft threads of the fabric comprising a plurality of untwisted continuous filaments. The woven fabric is likewise so arranged in the slide that the warp threads extend along the length of the slide and preferably the number of filaments in the weft thread is greater than the number of filaments in the warp thread.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention the support structure of the slide includes support walls with the slideway fabrics joined along their longitudinal edges and to opposing faces of the support walls. Each support wall is formed by a plurality of superposed inflatable tubes extending along the length of the slide, with the slideway fabrics secured at their longitudinal edges to a pair of opposing wall tubes next below the uppermost pair of opposing wall tubes so that the latter serve as guides for evacuees using the slide.